Story Behind The Pose: Hanumanasana

Hanuman the Monkey God

Most poses have relatable names. We understand the logic behind the name. For example, maybe it's literal, representing something we do like extended hand to bigtoe (utthita hasta padangustasana). Or, maybe an animal or item it might look like such as a tree pose (vrksasana) or a cat pose (marjariasana). However, the splits pose is named after Hanuman, the monkey god. Really?! Yep. However, once you hear the story about Hanuman maybe the name of Hanumanasana will make more sense to you.

Who is Hanuman?

Hanuman was born ½ god and ½ human. His mother was Anjana, who desperately wanted to be a mother. To make her dream come true, she prayed and prayed to the wind god, Vayu. Hearing her pleas, he decided to bless a few grains of rice. He sent them down to Anjana who immediately ate them. She became pregnant and soon gave birth to a little boy, called Anjaneya, which means son of Anjana. (Note: Anjaneyasana, the lunge pose, is also named after this guy.)

As a child, Anjaneya was extremely mischievous. One day, while looking up at the sky, Anjaneya thought the sun looked like a delicious mango. So he leapt up and tried to take a bite. This annoyed Surya, the Sun god, who struck him in the jaw (hanuh in Sanskrit) him with a lightning bolt. When Vayu (the wind god) heard his son had been hurt, he took a deep breath and sucked up all the air from the earth. Soon animals and people were suffocating. Yet, Vayu refused to release the air. To find a solution, the gods called an emergency meeting. They decided Anjaneya would be sent away from his mother to live with monkeys. There he got renamed Hanuman. However, to avoid future mischief, the gods cursed Hanuman with short-term memory, so he would never remember the true extent of his power.

When Hanuman got older her became friends with King Ram and his beautiful wife, Sita. In the Ramayana, an epic poem of India, the lovely Sita was kidnapped by an evil rival of Ram. Out of pure love for Ram and Sita, Hanuman went searching for Sita. He came to the edge of the ocean and knelt down to pray, in a pose similar to a kneeling lunge (Anjaneyasana). When he got up, out of pure faith and love, he gathered the courage to leap across the ocean. As he jumped, he reached out one foot toward the island where Sita was being held and the other reached back toward the land where he left Ram. Ah Ha! Now can you see the splits? This is what inspired the name of Hanumanasana for this pose!

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Want to read more stories about yoga? Check out this book: ​Myths of the Asanas.

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